Sneak Peek

Prologue

1997

Robert pushed open the screen door, grimacing at the loud squeak from the hinges. He stepped out of his cabin onto the whitewashed wraparound porch, breathing deep of the crisp fall air. Most of the leaves had already fallen from the trees, leaving stark branches naked in the sunlight. The sweet smell of dried and decaying leaves floated on the light breeze. The pine trees cast deep shadows under their full branches. He closed his eyes and absorbed the serene surroundings, letting the tension from the last few weeks slowly melt off his shoulders.

Being a doctor in an emergency room used to be easier, he mused. He used to work a few shifts a week to cover bills, but with budget cuts at the hospital, he’d been forced to take more and more shifts. It was getting harder to get the nights off that he needed for the full moons. More responsibilities had been heaped on him the longer he stayed at the hospital. Maybe it was time to move on to another town. He’d been in Glens Falls for almost eight years. He would have to move soon anyway, but most hospitals were in the same economic crunch. Maybe the next place he settled he could work as a family practitioner. Although, that forced the relocations faster. Being an ER doctor gave him some anonymity. He didn’t interact with the same patients day in and day out. He was just some doctor that someone saw with an emergency. In his position, he was easily forgotten, not studied, not connected to the community.

He stepped down off the porch and headed into the woods for a long walk to the creek. Each time he came to this camp he stayed in the same cabin and he took the walk to the stream. It would take him about an hour of hard hiking to make it to water, but it’d be well worth it. The creek was spring fed and cold all year long. During the summer, the creek was a refreshing way to cool off. Or it was just serene to sit by during the spring and fall. Today Robert was just looking to do some communing with nature. He wanted to blend in and be lost in the rhythm of the woods. He planned on stripping and shifting when he made it to the creek, but he’d hike as a human to and from the stream. It was his ritualistic way of shedding his humanity and gaining the connection with nature he craved.

After fifteen minutes of ground-eating strides he was skirting along the bottom of a hill. He heard a wounded whimper echoing through the valley in front of him. The sound was muffled, but it was distinct enough for him to know that it was a large animal that made the noise. He continued on his path, planning to ignore the animal. His wolf was interested in checking it out, but his human side was still in complete control. Wandering close to a wounded animal would most definitely spell disaster. He took a few more steps and heard the noise again. This time it was easier to make out, and he instinctively knew it was female. He wasn’t sure if it was a bear or a coyote, but he was sure it wasn’t a deer or other herbivore. After a few more steps and listening more closely to the cries and painful noises he gave in to his wolf’s demands and turned toward the location he thought the animal was hiding.

Robert approached a rocky outcropping with silent feet. He didn’t want to startle the animal, especially if it was a bear. When he was within a few feet of the rocky ledge, he scented a human female. Without conscious thought, he rushed the last couple of feet to find a crumpled girl curled in a fetal position wedged under an overhanging rock ledge. He dropped to his knees in front of the huddled little body.

“Hello? Can you hear me?” he asked quietly, hoping she was conscious. He didn’t want to startle her. When she didn’t move or respond, he attempted to get a response again. “My name is Robert. I’m going to check to see if you are okay. I’m a doctor. Can you understand?”

He didn’t wait for her to respond this time. Panic was coursing through his veins, prompting him to take action. He immediately started assessing her for injuries before trying to pull her out from the crevice she was wedged in. Her skin was pasty white. Her breathing was slow and erratic. Her pulse was very weak and thready. Her body temperature was extremely low. He couldn’t believe she was still alive.

He sucked in a quick gasp when he saw the raw wound on her neck and the telltale marks of a vampire bite marring her smooth skin. Shit. Vampires in the Adirondacks? He looked around superstitiously even though he knew they were alone in the woods. That would explain the lack of color and tepid temperature of her little body.

“Honey, can you hear me? I need to get you to a hospital,” he said as he slowly tried to pull her out of the crevice. He was sure she had to be unconscious, but she was fighting him with what little strength she had left. “Please, you need to let me get you out of here.”

She either passed out or gave in to his steady pulling because in a moment she was out from between the rocks and in his arms. She looked to be twelve or thirteen years of age. Long brown hair hung limply from her head. It was matted with sticks and mud. She had crusted blood around her mouth and deep bruises on her face and arms. Her clothes were nothing but tatters, and he noticed that she was barefoot. Very carefully he laid her on the ground and pulled off his coat. He quickly wrapped it around her and hefted her little body back into his arms.

“Hang on, hon. I’m going to get you help as fast as I can,” he said to his little bundle, but he was sure she wasn’t hearing him. He ran as fast as he could, tapping his inner wolf’s speed.

He vaulted the steps into the cabin and quickly gathered his keys and wallet, never setting the still-unconscious girl down. With a leap he jumped off the porch to the gravel driveway. He shuffled her into the back seat of his SUV and threw two wool blankets over her unmoving body. He ran to the driver’s side door and slammed it shut, shoving the keys into the ignition. Stones flew as he stomped onto the gas pedal, saying a silent prayer that the girl would survive the drive to Glens Falls. He grabbed his cell phone and dialed the ER desk at the hospital, explaining in clipped words that he was bringing in a girl that was close the death with hypothermia and possible massive blood loss. While he talked to the nurse on duty, he cranked the heat up in the vehicle.

During the hour it took to drive down to the hospital, Robert glanced repeatedly in the rearview mirror, hoping to catch some movement from the girl on the back seat. He tried to think of some sort of story to tell the swarms of doctors and nurses that would be over the girl in a matter of minutes. How to explain the wounds and lack of blood to the medical professionals without giving away information about the supernatural world? The best plan was to just push them to think it was an animal attack.

He pulled into the parking lot and drove around the building to the ambulance entrance. He threw the truck in park, jumped out, and ripped the back door open. The girl looked paler than she’d been before, and he could tell that she was barely hanging onto life. She smelled of approaching death. His wolf howled in his head with concern for the little girl. Her labored breaths whispering across her lips and were barely audible. He gently picked her up and swung her through the sliding doors, rushing toward the room the staff had already set up for his arrival.

The second he entered the building, organized chaos surrounded Robert and his little bundle. She was gently put on a bed, stripped of clothing, covered in heated blankets, and stuck with multiple needles to start the tests needed to track her ailments. An IV was started in one small hand as her blood pressure was taken. She was so close to death that her blood pressure caused errors on the monitoring equipment. Nurses scurried around, barking orders, making calls, and taking care of the girl.

In all the commotion, Robert stepped back and watched. He was on vacation and knew that hospital policy wouldn’t allow him to work on the girl without clocking in. He felt responsible for her, though, so he stayed quiet and stood against the wall watching his coworkers attempt to bring the girl back from the brink of death. He tried to close out the conversations, but pieces made it through his filter.

“Massive blood loss…”

“…Blood type anomalies.”

* * * *

Willie could hear people’s voices echoing down a tunnel, or at least that’s what it sounded like. She couldn’t open her eyes, or they were open and it was absolutely black wherever she was. She felt so cold, but she didn’t think her teeth were chattering. Maybe they were and she was just too numb to feel her jaw moving. The thoughts skittered through her mind as she tried to grasp anything that would anchor herself to her body.

A flame started burning in her stomach. Oh, God, were they setting her on fire? The pain intensified until she couldn’t think of anything else. Her flesh felt like it was melting from her body. Her mouth wouldn’t work to allow the scream out. She silently cried out until she wasn’t anything but a roasting ball of pain. Why would someone set me on fire alive? Someone help me, please!

She lay suffering through pain unlike anything she had every felt. Scorching flames licked from her belly toward her face. Fire consumed her body piece by piece. She tried to breathe through the fear and pain, but it was too intense. She tried to scream, but nothing worked right. Her mouth wouldn’t work. She couldn’t force air up her throat to get the sound out. She was trapped inside her head with the agony. Terror took her, and she dissolved into silent cries for help. Blissful darkness opened up and swallowed her, crowding out the fire and panic.

* * * *

Eight hours. He had been sitting for eight hours next to her bed waiting for her to wake up. Robert had stayed in the ER with the girl for the three hours it took the staff to bring her body temperature back up to safe levels, and to get enough blood back into her body to give her almost normal vital signs. She hadn’t reacted well to the transfusions, but other than that she was healing and recuperating very quickly. It was close to three in the morning, and he was exhausted. The nurses on this floor had repeatedly pushed him to leave and come back in the morning, but he couldn’t leave her alone. He had a pretty good idea of what she was, and without family around to keep her calm, the hospital might have a real crisis on its hands.

While the staff had worked on bringing her core body temperature up and getting blood into her system, he spent time reviewing the blood work that came back from the lab. There were very few ways to know if a person was a shifter, but one of them had to do with protein levels in the blood. This girl’s were borderline shifter levels, even with most of her blood drained from her body. If she was a shifter, she would wake and probably want to change to her animal form to speed her healing. Robert would keep her from doing that and was willing to sedate her if needed.

He changed his position again in the chair he’d taken up residence in. He was uncomfortable, but wouldn’t leave her until she woke. He rotated his head on his neck, trying to dispel some of the tension in his shoulders. Being a shifter without a pack was easy until situations like this. Robert didn’t know any other local shifters, so he couldn’t call anyone else to sit with her.

He reached forward and flipped through her chart again, reviewing the blood work one more time. Her protein levels were fluctuating with each blood draw, but that was to be expected with the multiple transfusions and IV fluids being pumped into her body. The levels that now concerned him were the red blood cell counts. When she was first brought in, even with little blood in her body, she had almost normal cell counts. Now, after eight hours and multiple transfusions she should have higher than normal numbers of blood cells streaming through her system, but she didn’t. Her counts continued to drop. This along with the crust of blood found around her mouth was disconcerting.

The possibility that she had been turned, or made vampire, was becoming more real as each hour passed. The virus that created vampires usually tore through a human body in an hour or two, changing DNA as fast as the virus could duplicate. This slow change to her blood levels was troubling to say the least. He really would’ve liked to take a look at the cells under a microscope, but he didn’t have a good excuse to invade the lab at three in the morning. It’d take one look to see if the shape of her blood cells were changing to the vampiric form.

Robert was snapped out of his thoughts by a quiet moan from the girl. She hadn’t opened her eyes yet, but she was starting to come around. He glanced at her heart rate on the monitor and noticed a slight increase. He leaned forward and lightly touched her arm.

“Can you hear me?” he whispered. He watched her eyes flicker behind her eyelids. She was definitely coming around. Her fingers flexed on one hand, and when he took that hand in his, her eyes popped open in wide-eyed terror.

* * * *

Willie came out of her stupor and noticed that the pain wasn’t as intense. Maybe they had figured out she wasn’t dead and had put the fire out. She could hear beeping and the slight rasping sound of someone breathing near her. Panic invaded her thoughts as the last memory she had played through her mind. The gorgeous man had stopped and let her climb into his car. He had talked to her about the weather and asked questions that she didn’t want to answer. Then he had turned black eyes on her, and terror had skated through her system just as he moved with superhuman speed to grab her. A mouth full of sharp canines and dripping saliva slid into her thoughts. When a warm hand grabbed hers, she opened her eyes, ready to bolt.

It took her a moment to realize that the man sitting next to her wasn’t the same psychopath that had picked her up. She also took in the sights and sounds of the hospital room she was in. The panic still coursed through her body, but she relaxed a little into the bed. She was safe, or at least safer.

“How’re you feeling?” the man asked her. His eyes held only concern.

How was she feeling? That was a really good question. She glanced down at her hands, expecting to see charred skin or bandages. She gasped when she saw her hands looked normal. Did she just dream the pain and fire?

“You don’t really need to answer that if you don’t want to. My name is Robert Smith. What’s yours?” The man was still watching her with an intensity she wasn’t accustomed to. He looked so normal, but her life had been ruined repeatedly over the last two days by “normal” looking people. He wore a blue and red flannel shirt that had some dark stains on it. Blood, she thought. My blood.

“Willie,” she croaked. Her throat hurt and burned. She was really thirsty. “Could I have something to drink, please?”

“Sure, just take it slow, okay?” He handed her a small plastic cup filled with ice chips and water. She sipped it like instructed while she studied him. Dark brown eyes watched her with concern and perhaps a little weariness. Tousled brown hair stuck up in random clumps giving him a rumpled look. He looked pretty normal, she thought.

“How did I get here?” she asked. She shied away from the memories that threatened to invade her mind again. The black eyes sucking her will from her, the strong hands that grabbed her arms and held her still as those sharp teeth sped toward her throat. She shivered with the memories.

“Well, I found you in the woods and brought you here. Willie, I need to talk to your parents. I’m sure they’re worried sick about you.”

“No, they aren’t worried,” She choked on the words. “They don’t give a shit about me.”

“Hey, watch the language,” Robert scolded with a scowl marring his face. “I don’t care if they care or not we have to call them. I’ve gone around the system for your treatments, but now that you’re awake we have to have someone responsible for you making decisions.”

“You can call them, but they’ll just come here to kill me. They dumped me in Old Forge. They don’t want me, and they won’t want to know that I’m alive. It’ll screw up their story.” She clenched her teeth together and lifted her chin. Unshed tears glistened in her eyes. She wouldn’t cry in front of a stranger over her parents. Shit. They weren’t her parents. No parent could drop off their teenager in the middle of nowhere and hope they died just because they weren’t normal.

“What do you mean they dumped you?” He scowled and sat back. He crossed his arms across his chest and waited.

“They pulled into a convenience store, got gas, and told me to get out. That’s what I mean,” she answered. She stared into his face willing him to challenge her on this. He could think whatever he wanted to. Her parents didn’t want her anymore, and by now her entire world would think she was dead.

“Why would they do that, Willie?” he asked in a hushed voice.

“I couldn’t be what they wanted and they didn’t want to deal with what the neighbors would say about me, so they got rid of me. I’m broken, you see, so they told everyone that I was killed in an accident.” Willie tried to keep herself from seeing her mother’s face as she’d explained why Willie couldn’t come with them. The disgust and contempt that had played across her mother’s beautiful face tore at Willie’s heart. How could they do that to me? Why couldn’t I be what they wanted?

“You wouldn’t understand. Just leave me alone.” She turned her head toward the window and closed her eyes. She willed the tears away before they spilled, at least until he left and she could cry in peace. What was she going to do now? Anger and fear bled into her thoughts. Where was she going to go? She hadn’t really had time to think about it before. Her parents had left her, and she started walking in the opposite direction they’d gone. She’d stuck a thumb out, and the fifth car to drive by stopped and picked her up. Then her nightmare had truly begun. She didn’t remember anything after being attacked, but obviously the thing had dumped her in the woods.

“Willie, I’m not leaving you alone. I found you, which makes you my responsibility until someone else takes over,” Robert said. She felt his hand grab hers again. “Now, you will explain to me why your parents left you, and then I’ll get you something to eat.”

“I can’t explain.” She sniffled and turned her head back to face him. “I can’t tell you because it’s a secret.”

“Do you mean it’s a family secret?” he asked, scowling with confusion and then another look crossed his face. “Hon, did they abuse you?”

“No, God, no. It’s nothing like that,” she stammered. “I just can’t tell you. You wouldn’t believe me even if I did tell you. Look, I’m tired. Can I go back to sleep for a while?”

Robert scooted closer to her bed and bent toward her, whispering so low she barely heard him. “Willie, look in my eyes and tell me I won’t believe you.”

She glanced at his eyes and gasped at the round, yellow, pupils staring back at her. The shape of his eyes had changed, and they were too large for his face. Oh God, he was a shifter, too. A sob escaped before she could stop it, and then tears were running down her cheeks. She threw her arms around his neck before she could stop herself.

“Shhh, it’s okay. I’ll take care of you. You didn’t shift at the full moon, did you?” His voice was soft with understanding. He guessed the cause for her abandonment. It didn’t happen too often anymore, but that used to be the practice in some family lines. If an offspring didn’t shift at the appropriate time, they were shunned and tossed out of the pack.

“No. I was supposed to this moon, and I didn’t. I don’t know what is wrong with me. But they just left me. Why? What did I do?” The sobs shook her body. She cried for the injustice of what her parents had done to her, for the fact that she was broken and would never know the joy of shifting like her family, for all of the injuries and fears she’d endured the last few days.

“Oh, baby, there isn’t anything wrong with you, and you didn’t do anything wrong. I promise you I won’t let anything else happen.” He stroked her back after wrapping his arms around her. He hummed low in his chest trying to comfort her. “You can stay with me, but we need to chat first.”

“I don’t even know you, though. You could be some sort of psycho like the guy that…” Willie stopped herself from admitting about the man that picked her up. If Robert was willing to help her out, that was nice, but she wasn’t going to trust someone at face value again.

“That what, Willie?” He leaned back to look in her face.

“The guy that picked me up when I was hitchhiking. He was weird, and I think he may have hurt me.” She reached up subconsciously to stroke her neck and found a bandage there. So, the memory wasn’t some dream. He really had attacked her. Her heartbeat sped with the one word that would explain the man… Vampire. Oh, God, she’d been attacked by freaking Dracula.

“I’m not a psycho. I promise. You can ask the entire staff of this hospital, and they’ll vouch for my upstanding moral character.” He grinned. “Look, you already know something about me that not a single soul in this state knows. That should tell you something, right?”

“We get you patched up, and then you come home with me,” he answered, and then he cleared his voice and started again. “I need to know about this guy that hurt you. I’m concerned about your blood work and can probably guess what he was.”

“He was a vamp, I think. His eyes turned black, and he came at me with canines extended. That’s the last thing I remember.” A thought skittered across her mind and horror struck her. “You think I’m turning, don’t you?”

“I don’t know what to think. Your blood work pointed to you being a shifter, but your blood cells seem to be dropping in number, which could mean a few different things… But, yes, I’m concerned.”

“I would be one, though, right, by now? I mean, it’s late and I was bit really early yesterday morning. If I was going to change, I would’ve by now. So, there isn’t anything to worry about, right?”

The look of compassion that crossed Robert’s face made Willie cringed. This wasn’t going to be good.

“I don’t know what it means. Yes, you should be fine, but I’m concerned. When I get you home, I can take a look at your blood and see what’s going on. I don’t want to draw attention to the anomaly here in case something ‘interesting’ is happening.” Robert squeezed her hand, and then he stood. “I’m going to chat with the admissions department and your attending physician. They should release you to my care so we can get out of here. I’ll be back in a few minutes, okay?”

“Okay. Could you get me something to eat? I’m starving. Maybe a burger or something?” she asked, tentatively smiling at her new savior. Please, God, let him be normal.

“Sure.” He chuckled. “Or we can drive through some place and get you something. Let me see what they have in the cafeteria.”

“Robert?” Willie desperately needed the following question answered, but she was scared beyond anything she’d ever experienced. “If I was changing, would I know it?”

He turned from the doorway and sighed, then took a deep breath to answer her. He paused and then said the only thing that could terrify her, “I don’t know, Willie. I don’t know if you would know until it was done.”